Sunday, December 16, 2007

Question for the Footballers

Question for all you football (American football) fans out there: what is it, exactly, about the Patriots' taping of the opposing team's hand signals that is so illegal exactly?

I'm not trying to suggest it's good sportsmanship to do something like that, but haven't teams been devoting significant effort to decode their opponents' hand signals for years now? Is the problem that he actually taped them; that it'd be ok to squint and use binoculars but taping is a no-no? I could believe that, except we're talking about a sport where the players actually have little radio trancievers built into their helmets, and there's always a "team upstairs" that has access to a bajillion different camera angles who can tell the coach exactly when a play should be challenged and when it shouldn't. So what's the deal?

On a completely unrelated note: Bruce Sprinstein's "Santa Claus is Coming to Town" is a good song, but it is also way overplayed.